


A Fool to Want

by Inky_Pens



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:14:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21846199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inky_Pens/pseuds/Inky_Pens
Summary: It's a Dain & Jude one-shot. That's it. That's the catch.
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Dain Greenbriar
Comments: 13
Kudos: 44





	A Fool to Want

Oriana warned me against this. I was a fool not to heed her warnings then, and I am a fool now. But the promise was too great. A position in the Court of Shadows and knighthood upon his coronation. How could I turn down the only dreams I had since I was stolen from one realm and deposited in another? A mortal who could not only survive Faerie but thrive in it among the Folk. I would be respected—I could command it! Where I could not be immune, I would be powerful enough to overcome.

And Dain, Dain who had made such extravagant promises of a different Elfhame, a better Elfhame. Dain who treated me as equal and could be persuaded to see others like me as equals. No more Sophies. Dain, who would be a better High King than both of his brothers, certainly. 

When he first asked me to undress for him, it was an alarmingly gentle request. As though I had a choice in the matter. In every conventional way, I suppose I did, but the lure and allure was too great. That was all he requested the first night, and the next few nights were much of the same: a warm request to remove my clothes, stand before him while he feasted on the sight like a starving man to a banquet held in his honor, proud and needy all the same. It was a week before he touched me, and I would be lying if I did not admit that by then, I was starving for it, too.

“Do you know how enticing you are?” he whispered against the round shell of my ear. “You are a temptress. How should I complete any task with you near me? It is impossible to resist you, but Jude, you must know that I have tried my best.”

If I thought that was his way of telling me this was not to be a typical would-be king and his consort encounter, then I am all the more foolish for not understanding Elfhame better than I ought. Was I so starved for favorable attention that I would lick the crumbs and call myself full?

As for lovers, I vehemently rejected the label. I flinched when he referred to it in passing. When he touched me, it was not loving, it was possessive. When his fingers entered me, it was not tender, it was an interrogation. When he completed, it was not satisfying, it was arrogant, a conquest. Whether he was good or I was inexperienced, I may not know until I am bedding someone else, but the fool that I am, I keep coming back anyway.

He always waits for me come to him. I think I hate myself for it.

This time, while I am contemplating my own stupidity, his face is pressed against the junction of my thighs on my father’s desk in the study Madoc abandoned less than a half hour ago. He sits in my father's chair, refusing to kneel even for a reward as sweet as my body. I was wound up; that will be my excuse for this reckless behavior tomorrow. Valerian had attacked me, I just barely finished scrubbing the dirt beneath my fingernails from burying him, and Dain had arrived to our home for a scheduled meeting with Madoc. When Oriana ushered him in to the study, apologizing for Madoc's delay, I slipped in right after her and turned the lock behind me. 

I doubt there was a meeting planned at all.

His fingers laced gingerly in mine on the hand that was still bandaged from his earlier punishment. It burned, but so did the fire between my legs, and perhaps this way his way of making amends. But then he squeezed too hard, either forgetting himself or uncaring, and the pain shot through my arm and straight to my brain. A reminder that, once again, I was a fool. 

“Quickly now Jude,” he murmured against me. The vibrations traveled up, up, my body like rivulets up to my eyeballs, where they rolled skyward. “Or do you want to be caught, naughty girl?” My lips quivered with the shuddering breath.

To silence him, I cradled the back of his head with my free hand and pressed him against me harder. ‘_Shut up and finish the task at hand, for once,_’ I wanted to tell him, but no matter the shared physical relationship between us, Dain and I were nowhere near closer than the day he first propositioned me to work for him. If anything, I hated him nearly as much as I hated Cardan. I wondered if Cardan was better at this than Dain. I suspected yes.

If I thought I was on fire before, I was quickly heading towards my own small inferno. Thoughts of Cardan flooded my brain and, I’m almost certain, Dain’s mouth. Cardan’s wicked tongue with sharp and poisonous words laced on it. Cardan’s bruising fingers gripping my thighs firmly, not like his clumsy handling of any sharp object whatsoever. In my mind, Cardan was skilled at sex beyond my wildest dreams, but I dreamt it anyway. And when I finished, when I dropped my sweat-sheened back against a flurry of paperwork, I bit my tongue to hold back the cry.

It was Cardan’s name I bled for.


End file.
